This Is Halloween….

I’m humming the tune as I’m typing……another Halloween has come and gone.  This year’s was particularly chaotic!  Once again, as a result of my own doing, I was spread thin at two different class parties which I was in charge of.  I am room mom for Jared’s, Gavin’s and Scott’s classrooms.  

Fortunately Gavin’s teacher has a system where she throws class homework parties and at the beginning of the year she has two parents sign up to be responsible for each of them.  They are always the last Friday of the month and as a room mom I just have to make sure that the mom’s who signed up for them show up with something.  So that’s easy enough and his homework party was on the 28th (although I do feel bad that it’s a little anticlimactic on Halloween when seemingly everyone else has a big bash. 

 

The school holds a parade early in the morning at 9:30 and the kids get to walk around the whole school….through all the classrooms and into the lunchroom where the parents can sit and watch.  This takes a little over an hour and at the end, we had Scott’s party scheduled.  It was pretty straight forward.  We did the typical 5 station rotation; 2 where the kids made something, 2 where the kids played games and one where they decorated and ate a sugar cookie.  For these parties, I call up moms and assign one to each station and those moms are responsible for that activity and all its supplies.  I usually run the cookie station…. :)  Scott seemed to have a great time!

Then I had Jared’s party later that day at 1pm.  Since he is getting older, I figured they might not appreciate the same 5 station rotations and I opted to do 6 different “Minute to Win It” games.  At first when we told the kids a few of them actually groaned and complained, but I think it turned out to be a hit too!  We had a game where they had a minute to sculpt something, a game where they had a minute to wrap a partner in TP, a game where they would bounce pencils by the eraser and try to land them in a cup, another where the rolled a marble out a tube to knock over  cups, and one where they put a quarter on their elbow and tried to catch it with their hand.  I ran the one where they put an oreo on their forehead and moved their face around to catch it in their mouth without using their hands.  It was fun and I got some great pictures!  Even the kids that originally griped had a great time.  We had another mom (and my best friend) Amy, bring donuts for the kids at the end.  It was a sugary fun time!

After all those festivities, I was running out of time to do anything spectacular for dinner.  I like to do a funny ghoulish themed dinner and was pretty much spent after that.  My parents came over for that.  We had “scabby pizza,”  “Frog guts salad,” breadsticks and “Witches Brew” to drink.  I also bought a cute little pumpkin cake for dessert.  Simple, but it worked.  The kids were anxious to chomp down their dinner and get going on their trick or treating.  This year Jared decided to be a Slurpee, Gavin opted to be a vampire, Scott wanted to be Captain America and Mason was Scott’s mighty companion…..baby Thor!  It was so cute!  I loved walking behind Mason watching his cute little baby head bobbing and his bunchy diaper wiggling…..just wanted to pinch his bum and cover him with kisses!  SO cute!  This was the first year in awhile we haven’t carted around a stroller when we went and its strange to think that we never will again!  Fun that everyone could trick or treat and so cute when Mason rand around with a glo stick in hand telling everyone “hammer, hammer.”  He thought it was his Thor hammer!  Of course I had to put in a picture of what was probably the coolest decorated house in our neighborhood too……although Mason would argue that point.  When he saw it he just cried.

It was a crazy-busy day….all to be followed up the next day by my hosting a baby shower for my neighbor!  Too much!  Too much!  And BOY…..am I grateful that week is over!